The Next Right Thing

In an effort so serve those who aren’t podcast listeners (and satisfy my relentless need to experiment) I’m sharing a story from The Next Right Thing Podcast here on the blog. If you’d prefer to listen, tune in to Episode 63: Make Room.

We woke up this morning to a cold, quiet house, fresh snow falling on top of yesterday’s impressive accumulation. The power went out sometime around midnight.

John carried in wood and boiled water for coffee. I emptied the fridge of perishables and packed them in ice. We read by the light of candles and our fireplace, with blankets on our laps, hands wrapped around mugs of hot instant coffee.

Then I outlined a podcast episode with a pen on actual paper so we’re basically homesteaders now.

On Sunday as the snow fell and more kids started to show up at our house, looking for a place to sit and hot chocolate to drink, John suggested we push the sofa back from the rug. It will make more room, he said. We can spread out, he said. And so we did. We pushed back the furniture to make more room.

Making room doesn’t just happen. We have to do it on purpose.

In the end we would get over a foot of snowfall in one day, the third largest recorded in one day in central North Carolina. This snow wouldn’t leave a clean white blanket on our front lawn. Instead the photos show a mostly white scene with rusty brown leaves dotting the ground because this is an early snow for us.

In December, the trees aren’t quite finished shedding their leaves yet. So when an early snowfall comes and the wind picks up, they make room to hold the snow on branches by letting go their leaves.

Like Rahab, whose name means broad, large, a vast space of land; who betrayed her own people to assist the people of God, who made room for spies to find protection from capture, danger, and death, we, too, make room for righteousness and goodness to come take up residency within us.

Like Mary, the mother of God, who had never known a man, who had other plans for her life, who never asked for the choosing, we make room for the Holy interruption to come and weave life in unexpected ways at an unplanned time for the sake of an unknown people.

Like the trees in my front yard shedding brown leaves as snow comes too much too soon, we make room for something new even though it comes too fast, even though it might feel dangerous, even though we aren’t quite ready.

We make room.

This weekend we made room in the fridge for extra food, room in our schedule for kids to miss three days of school and for extra kids to come over andsled.

Today I make room for peace even though chaos ensues. I make room for hope even though my to do list is longer than my not-to-do list.

Maybe your next right thing for today is to consider where you might need to make some room.

Is there a room in your house you need to prepare — to take the boxes from the corner and cover the bed with fresh sheets to make space for a guest?

Is there good, important work hiding beneath the clutter on your desk, keeping you distracted from your calling?

Are there clothes in your closet that no longer fit your body or your life stage?

Are you holding on to an old dream, a former relationship, a worn-out worry that’s taking up too much space and cluttering up your heart?

Might you be willing to create space and make room for something new?

Is it time? Are you ready?

During Advent, it’s true we wait expectantly. It’s also true we’re preparing for an arrival.

What does preparation look like for you today? Might it include creating some space? Making some room? Clearing some clutter, not just the kind you can see?

O God give us eyes to see the extra things we no longer need, both the kind we can touch and the kind invisible.

Be our counselor as we discern our next right thing.

Be our priest as we confess the clutter we’ve allowed to crowd the way.

Be our midwife as we steward new birth.

Be our courage as we dare to be ruthlessly honest and relentlessly gentle with ourselves.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning is now, and will be forever.

Amen. Hallelujah.

If you want some daily help to create space for your soul during December, The Quiet Collection for Christmas is available through Tuesday December 11. For less than a dollar a day, we’ll deliver an audio devotional to your email inbox everyday until Christmas. Learn more here.

The internet tells us adults make over 30,000 decisions every day, but I would guess when we are in the midst of a major life transition — a job change, an engagement, a new house, a new baby, new school, injury or diagnosis, new responsibilities or even a crisis of faith — the number of new decisions goes up and the weight of the usual ones are even heavier.

If you are in a time of transition, you are a prime candidate for decision fatigue.

For anyone who needs to re-focus, to receive what this transition has to teach you, instead of running past it in excitement or running from it in fear, I give you this — A Soul Minimalist’s Guide for Starting Over.

1. Be a Beginner

When we talk about new beginnings, we usually frame the concept with phrases of hope like springtime, flowers blooming, a new love, a new start.

On a hard day, we encourage ourselves with tomorrow is a new day! Joy is going to come in the morning.

New beginnings are usually welcome. But being a beginner? Not so much.

We want our circumstances to change, to start again, to be brand new. But when they change, we often don’t give ourselves permission to be new within them.

All beginnings hold elements of both joy and heartbreak. When we enter a new beginning, we have generally also experienced some kind of ending which comes with layered emotions and experiences of grief, transition, and letting go.

And so I say all of this just to get us here: don’t be afraid to be a beginner. Be relentlessly kind to yourself.

Let yourself be a beginner and receive all the gifts beginning has to give.

2. Stop Collecting Gurus

One way I’ve discovered helps me live my life more fully is to take inventory when anxiety shows up. Rather than avoid it as I’m most prone to do, I choose instead to stop, to notice, and in this case, pay attention to the story my inbox was telling me.

When we’re confronted with starting over, it can be tempting to look outside of ourselves for confident voices to point the way for us. This isn’t a bad thing, but it can keep us from settling into ourselves and quiet enough to hear the voice of God.

Cleaning out my inbox one day, I realized I had emails from experts in all areas – online marketing, book launching, fashion, and de-cluttering. What I didn’t have was space to consider my next right thing.

It was obvious I had way too many gurus talking to me and if I wanted to get clarity, I needed to take a break from them.

3. Gather Co-Listeners

If you aren’t sure what to do next, maybe you need to gather some co-listeners.

This is different than collecting gurus. There’s something powerful about gathering people who know you well specifically for the purpose of listening, question asking, and reflection. At the very least, it will force you to do some deep thinking about the issue you’re trying to discern in this transition because you’ll want to be ready for the co-listeners questions and insights.

Knowing our Father, our friend Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who lives and dwells within us, my guess is that he isn’t so concerned with the outcome of our decision at least not in the same way we are.

But he would be delighted to know that the decision we are carrying is moving us toward community and not away from it, that it is leading us to depend on others more and not less, and that it is turning our face toward his with a posture of listening with the hopeful expectation of receiving an answer.

4. Pick What You Like

If you feel unsure in a new situation, overwhelm is usually not far behind.

When I stood in the middle of the garden center with one plant in my cart and not sure what to do next, I felt stuck and began to feel that familiar discouragement I get when confronted with a simple decision that has many options in an area where I don’t have a lot of confidence.

The discouragement barreled down fast. It was familiar, it was annoying, and it was kind of ridiculous.

What does it look like to just start or to start over, to take a next right step towards something we want even if we feel unsure? Maybe a good place to start is to simply pick what you like, then see how it grows.

“The beginning space was actually a holy space, not just a layover on my way to something better.”

–Leeana Tankersley, Begin Again

If you are a human and are seeing this field, please leave it blank.

I send out a secret letter to my readers one time a month. Want to get it?

I’m all about helping you create space for your soul to breathe, starting with your inbox. Over 33,000 people trust me with their email address. I will never send spam or photos of bare feet. You have my word on this.

But with the state of our soul and the pace of our lives, are we giving ourselves the room we need to make thoughtful decisions, much less ones that actually reflect who we are and what we feel called to?

We are finishing up this season of Lent and many people gave things up, the sugar, the Netflix, the small obsessions that hijack our focus and the larger ones that keep us numb and disengaged.

So in this season of giving things up, I wanted to enter the conversation with a question. What does it mean to let things go? Maybe not just for a season, maybe for good. What do we need to release?

For anyone who wants to uncover some of those things so that you can move forward in love, I give you this — A Soul Minimalist’s Guide to Letting Go.

Stop rushing clarity

For the last three years, I’ve had some ideas for a few projects. Some I’ve done and others I can’t quite move on yet. It’s not for lack of motivation or conviction that the thing ought to be done. But I’ve had this unequivocal sense that I need to wait like a hand is stretched out in front of me.

I’ve walked through all the familiar stages of new project things with this idea, the talking, the praying, brainstorming, writing down notes as ideas as they come, paying attention to the world around me and the world within me as it relates to the subject. But the progress doesn’t seem to come.

When the next steps are unclear, doubt is often the most logical conclusion. Maybe I don’t know how to hear God’s voice after all. Maybe all this is just my idea.

We can start down that road of doubt and questioning if we want to. But just because the doubts show up doesn’t meant you have to let them sit down. They won’t linger if they’re not welcome.

Stand on your head

One of the most unlikely practices that have helped me learn to release some things is by standing on my head. Not metaphorically, but actually, physically standing on my head.

I’ve been delightfully surprised at the simple lessons I’ve learned while physically practicing this inversion – but the truth is we can practice standing on our head even if we never get upside down. It’s all about perspective.

In my own personal practice of letting go this month, I’m realizing I need to let go of the version of myself who feels like she always has to be productive. Standing on my head keeps me playful, open, and light.

Remember the real art

Years ago, before the store was a store, she had a dream to create a place where they take the old, beautiful things, the wooden chairs and side tables and other broken pieces people tend to throw away, and give them new life. They wanted a place to do what they always did: make the used into art.

They had their last big mark-down sale and cleaned out the back rooms both the crannies as well as the nooks. Our community said goodbye to the little shop called Chartreuse.

I can see how that might seem like sad news, that our friends who had a dream have now closed down their shop. If you only looked from the outside, you might lose hope.

The art lives on because the true art was not the shop.

The real art isn’t a shop any more than it’s a song, a book, a painting, or a degree. The real art is something more, something deeper, something good.

When you hold your dreams with open hands, you let them breathe, grow, and have life. This can be scary because living things move, they change, and they take shapes we can’t predict or control. Instead of seeing it as a letting go, maybe instead it’s a making room. Let go of what no longer fits. Make room for something good.

Hold one thing at a time.

In my experience, a practical roadblock of doing the next thing in love is we are carrying too many things in the first place. What if we gave ourselves permission to hold just one thing at a time?

There is power in simplicity.

I am never more open to advice, to perspective, and to other people’s opinions than when I have a decision to make. I’m never more aware of my need for God, for hope, and for direction than when I have an unmade decision. I’m open, I’m ready, I’m listening for any clue as to what I should do next.

But often the clues remain within us, unheard and undiscovered. When we take the time to follow those clues we might find out things we are holding onto that we no longer need and what desires we might need to lean into and where we might need to let go?

Out of all the decisions in this world we have control over, there is definitely one whole category of our lives we can’t predict, manage, or bullet point.

No matter how organized we get, how much we plan, how prepared we are for what might come, one thing we can always count on is that the people in our life will surprise us, delight us, disappoint us, overwhelm us, or confuse us.

We can manage our time, our work, and our agendas but we cannot manage relationships. At least, not if we want them to be healthy.

How do we move forward in love? How can we discern a next right step with the people in our lives when they can be so unpredictable and. . . people-y?

For anyone who wants to remember some basic but often overlooked foundational truths about relating with people, I give you this — A Soul Minimalist’s Guide to Relationships.

Release your agenda.

Why is this one so simple and so hard!?

When one of our girls experienced a profound disappointment in her life (she was in fourth grade so gauge your imagination accordingly), I struggled as her mom to balance wanting to teach her a lesson and just wanting to be with her.

It’s true, learning is good and disappointments are an opportunity for growth. But I’ve grown weary of trying to squeeze a lesson out of everything, of always asking what God is trying to teach me in every circumstance, of seeing the world through lesson-colored glasses and forcing struggling people to do that, too.

Instead, when it comes to discerning your next right thing in relationships, releasing your agenda is a good place to start.

Let’s practice walking into the great mystery of God. Let’s practice encountering Jesus as a person and not a character. Let’s practice releasing our agenda to perform, perfect, and prioritize. Let’s live this day as a daughter first and allow the student to tag along behind.

Look for arrows, not answers.

So often, the questions we have in life that give us trouble aren’t the daily ones like what to wear, what to eat, when to mow the grass (although these can become burdensome if we’re already struggling with decision fatigue).

In my experience, the situations where I most desperately want an answer are the ones that are the hardest to find. These usually have to do with things like faith, vocation, and relationships.

My husband John and I went through a vocational transition about five years ago. No only did we not have answers, every question we asked seemed to birth more questions. What we discovered over that several year-long transition was we were looking for the wrong thing.

Rather than a specific plan, God offered us his hand and led us not to clear answers but simply back to one another. It was one of the most life-changing periods of our lives and it didn’t come from a five step agenda but from listening and looking for arrows to our next right step.

“Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.” — Ann Patchett, What Now?

Come home to yourself.

As difficult as it may be to admit, sometimes it’s easier to focus on every relationship except the one I’m guaranteed to have for the rest of my living life – the one between me and myself. It doesn’t seem right since we are already so good at thinking of ourselves first, wondering what people are thinking of us, and basically being our own point of reference in all situations.

Maybe relief from selfishness won’t be found in denying ourselves the way we tend to think of it, but to finally become ourselves the way we were intended to be. Not the false, try-hard, self-referential version, but the true, free self who is created in the image of God.

The only person you’re guaranteed to be with every day of your life is you. So maybe it’s time to make some peace. You don’t have to fly apart in the midst of chaos. You can learn to sit down on the inside and be at home with yourself instead.

“It’s a wild and wonderful thing to bump into someone and realize it’s you.”

Choose connection.

When it comes to relating with people, whether it’s family or strangers, how we enter a room can mean the difference between connecting with them or comparing ourselves to them. If I walk in and immediately wonder, What are they thinking of me? then I have automatically made comparison a top priority.

Contrary to what we often say about connection and chemistry, the truth is connection doesn’t normally just happen. We have to actively choose to set aside our own insecurities and move toward people without an agenda or a measuring stick.

“If your life is a constant blur of activity, focus, and obligation, you are likely to miss critical breakthroughs because you won’t have the benefit of pacing and negative space. What’s not there will impact your life as much or more than what is.”

I do not have power sheets to offer (love those!), an innovative planner to present (though I want to create this one day), or a webinar to teach you about goal-setting (though I’ve attended at least two of those in the last year).

What I do have is time management for your soul.

Most time saving tips focus on your schedule and we need those. But that’s not why you come here.

My self-appointed job in this space is to help you create space for your soul to breathe so that you can discern your next right thing in love.

These tips might not show up on your calendar but they could help on the more invisible level of your soul.

When we are overwhelmed, it’s easy to become distracted and stuck in false starts. It’s the fast-track to decision fatigue and I want to help get you out of it.

It’s counter-intuitive, but what I often need most when I’m in a rush is to slow down. It helps me think better, discern better, and gently take just one next right step instead of tripping over twenty.

Allow me to help you slow for a few moments so that you can pay attention to what’s happening beneath the surface.

This will inform your decisions and in turn, eventually, your schedule as well.

Choose Your Absence

I’m all about being a person of presence. But we can’t be present to everything all the time.

One way to learn to cultivate presence might sound at first, counter intuitive. It’s actually by your absence.

Not your absence from people or responsibility, but absence from the things that are keeping you from your people and your responsibilities.

One thing you could choose your absence from is anything that comes your way disguised as “a great opportunity.”

For many of us the beginning of the year can be a time when we all get high on hope, searching the horizon for what might be next.

Living attentive and paying attention is one of my favorite ways to live, but I’ve discovered if I do it in the wrong order by going outward before I move inward, then I may add to the stress and distraction in my life in ways I never intended to do.

“The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present. We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance–and choose wisely.”

Ignore With Intention

If your schedule is already so full that you’re having a hard time even making simple decisions, you probably already recognize the fact that there are a lot of things in your schedule that fall under the column of things you can’t control.

But can we agree that your Instagram feed and your phone notifications are not included in that column?

I mention this because in my season of life right now, the anxiety triggers that cause the most frustration come mostly from a screen either a computer screen like something I read in my email inbox, or on a blog or on Facebook, a TV screen, something I see on the news, or a phone screen like instagram, voxer, or a text message.

For those of us who work online for example like I do, turning off the computer or phone completely isn’t always an option. But there are simple and practical ways to cut down on the low-grade anxiety that is showing up in your feeds and follows.

“The first step to crafting the life you want is getting rid of everything you don’t.”

Find a No Mentor

What do you do when your schedule is full and you have things waiting in the wings? How do you decide your yeses from your nos? Sometimes you can make a list and other times you can sleep on it.

But some decisions you’re too close to and can’t see the better from the best. That’s why you need a No Mentor, someone who will help you say your strong no so that you can be more available for your brave and intentional yeses.

My sister is the original No Mentor (she even coined the phrase for us) and she is a profesh. This doesn’t mean you have to get her to be your No Mentor, though. You can find someone in your own life to do that for you. And eventually, you can learn to be your own.

“May you be blessed with good friends, and learn to be a good friend to yourself, journeying to that place in your soul where there is love, warmth, and feeling. May this change you.”

Embrace Your Limits

There’s something uniquely discouraging about finally knowing what you want to do and where you feel most called only to run into a roadblock. Often these roadblocks present themselves as some kind of limitation – fatigue, heartbreak, time, money, or support.

Instead of fighting those, perhaps your next right thing is to embrace them instead. Because our limits tell us important things about ourselves.

They help us draw lines for margin.

They pave the way for vulnerability.

They show us what we aren’t able to do and that can be just as important as what we are able to do.

Over the last two years, a project has been quietly rising up in me. At first I was unaware of it, then I was open to it, and eventually it was straight up maddening that I couldn’t figure out what it wanted to be.

I hinted at it here on the blog in various ways not because I was trying to be coy, but because hints were all I had. It was beyond frustrating and uncomfortable to have ideas with little to no form. It was only about two months ago that I realized, Oh. This idea I have had that I thought might be a book is actually, quite clearly a podcast.

And so I set out treating it that way and it smiled and grew and responded to my attention and surprise of all surprises, I can’t believe I didn’t see it all along.

That’s how art works sometimes. It swirls and teases, sparkles and flirts and just when you get excited about it, it gets moody and squirmy and accuses you of not understanding.

What once felt like a playful dance morphs fast into drama.

If only the work of art would come in outline form, predictable and linear, then the creative process would be much less grueling. But that would be less satisfying and require zero transformation or faith.

So here is a post about how that idea I thought might be a book is actually quite happy as a podcast.

Really, though, it’s a post about how creative ideas work and how we must move forward with them even when we don’t know what we’re doing.

I will tell you the story for the sake of your project and not my own. Wherever you are in the midst of your own creation, perhaps these heartfelt tips will be of some encouragement to you if you are waiting for a stubborn project to take shape.

***

Two years ago this very week, my book Simply Tuesday released into the world. It was a book I am proud of and still love to this day (authors can’t always say this and so for now, I am grateful).

That book was part of my second book contract, both of which were two book deals. So by the time I finished Simply Tuesday, I had written and released a total of four books, fulfilling my contractual obligations for book-writing up to that point.

It also marked the end of six full years of the book proposal pitching, writing, editing, revising, launching, and promoting cycle that I had worked through four times over.

I obviously knew that end time was coming and I welcomed it with imaginary flowers and dancing and confetti and the joy of the light of a thousand suns. My soul was desperate for a break from long-form writing and I couldn’t wait to work on whatever I wanted. Or nothing at all.

While I did a lot of promotional work for the book during the fall of 2015, I was grateful I was not also working on a fifth book. As many authors do, every other time I had launched a book, I always had one eye on the next one, despite the difficulty of creating a new book while promoting an old one.

Needless to say, that fall season I was grateful for the singular focus on Simply Tuesday, the lighter writing schedule that satisfying a contract brought, and for the opportunity to practice what I had just spent two years writing about – to celebrate my smallness.

1. Your vocation demands you remain open even if the timing is off. (And the timing is almost always off.)

The first step toward starting a project even when you don’t know what you’re doing is this: understand the nature of the work you do means that you can’t control when ideas might come. You can save them, steward them, and even tell them no, but you cannot keep them from showing up at your doorstep just because you’re taking a break.

Clearly I wasn’t looking for a new idea, not yet anyway.

Four months after Simply Tuesday released, my friend and worship director at our church Michael VanPatter asked me to read a Wendell Berry poem for a Christmas service at church. I have an idea for our service, he said, and I hope you might be willing to help.

He wanted to compose a piece of music as a soundtrack to a poetry reading and asked if I would read the poem. For it to work, it needs to be read thoughtfully and, well…poetically. Which is why I thought of you.

Of course I said yes and was glad to do it. (As an aside, let me just point out the obvious – he composed a piece of music to be played behind the poem so, let’s be real: the true beauty of that offering was the music, not my reading.)

The format was meaningful to me personally and later, people told me they had the same experience.

By this time, I also served on the scripture reading team at church and was already becoming smitten with the spoken word.

I signed up for an Audible account and began listening to audio books. I subscribed to more podcasts and listened on the go.

Podcasting was obviously not a new idea. I’d been listening to them for years and even participated in one for hope*writers with my co-founders. But that podcast was specifically for writers and the writing life and I didn’t do any of the technical work for it. I literally showed up, talked into a microphone, and left all the actual work to my Dad, our podcast producer.

I paid attention to how much I enjoyed reading that poem at Christmas. And I thought how wonderful it would be if someone would read to me everyday while music played in the background. Kind of a crazy idea, but there you go.

I don’t know any other way to say this (but I think if you are a maker, you get it). New ideas start out like tiny gremlins. That’s the word I use in my head, though when I look up “gremlin” it’s defined as imaginary mischievous sprite regarded as responsible for an unexplained problem or fault, especially a mechanical or electronic one.

Now that I think of it, that’s exactly the right word.

Idea gremlins show up and disrupt the soul without explanation. If you try to figure them out before it’s time, it will only end in frustration. Instead, let them come. Let them dance. Let them turn over some tables. See what they have to say without demanding they have a reason.

Try not to get too fussy about it.

The idea gremlins aren’t the problem. Our expectation that the gremlins come with clarity is the real problem. Instead of forcing an explanation, receive them for what they are and turn to your Father to sort them out with you.

3. Understand that clarity cannot be rushed.

It’s a direct quote from Marie Forleo and ever since she said it, I write those four words everywhere: Clarity cannot be rushed. I am guilty of clarity worship and I don’t think I’m alone.

Sometimes when the right words won’t come, or the idea remains unexplored, I experience temporary amnesia, forgetting how an inability to express an idea or experience does not render it meaningless. It simply means I need more time. I go through seasons of forgetting this, but I always come back around to believe it again.

“As a people, we are not comfortable with waiting. We see it as wasted time and try to avoid it, or at least film it with trivial busyness. We value action for its own sake. It is hard to trust in the slow work of God.”

-Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening

In this particular story I’m telling, at the time these audio ideas started to form, I was happy to wait. Remember, I knew this season of slowness and rest was coming. I was glad for it, welcomed it, and hoped for it to be a year of listening and discerning what was next.

But when Christmas came and went and we moved into late spring and I still wasn’t working on anything and I still had this growing love of the audio format but didn’t know what to do with it, my patient listening slowly began to morph into a frustrated tapping.

I had this unequivocal sense that I needed to wait on it, like a hand is stretched out in front of me.

In the past, I described this wait like a mom who hit the brakes too hard at the stoplight and her arm instinctively stretches across the passenger seat.

Like that, but less frantic. More gentle.

It was clear I needed to wait longer. It wasn’t clear why.

As I paid attention to what was resonating with me, audio came up again and again. But I didn’t know what to do with it.

Obviously I thought of doing a podcast. It wasn’t like that didn’t come up in my mind. But you can’t just start a podcast for no reason with nothing to say. I mean, you can (and lots of people do, I suppose) but I needed to figure out what the gift was first and then decide what would be the best wrapping.

4. Create a small version.

If you want to write a book, write one scene and see how it sits. If you want to write a curriculum, gather a group for one night at your house to talk about the subject you want to teach.

Do it small and do it soon.

Some may call this validating your idea. That’s formal, though. Instead, I just call it Try Something While The Risk Is Low To See If You Like It And If The People Get It.

And so with my growing crush on audio formats combined with my forever mantra to help create space for the soul to breathe, I realized I just needed to move already.

And this is where it might seem like I’m contradicting myself. Because while it’s true that clarity cannot be rushed, it is also true that it doesn’t mean we have to wait for clarity before we move.

In fact, any meaning full work I’ve ever created has almost always started out in fog. The clarity can’t be rushed, so sometimes means we have to move without it.

Let it come when it comes. Meanwhile, get to work.

Here is where self-awareness is key. Here is where we need to develop our creative instinct and spiritual intuition, which is why paying attention to our inner life is so important.

If we’re going to bring forth creative work into the world, we have to be able to discern the difference between sacred waiting and scared waiting.

For months, in prayer and listening, I wanted to move but it wasn’t time. I believe that waiting period was a sacred time of letting the seed take root in the dark.

And then by late spring, it was time to move even though I didn’t know where I was going. It was just time. My instinct kicked in, and I couldn’t just wait for the thing to present itself anymore. I had to chase it down.

What this looked like was a short audio devotional series called 7 Days of Still Moments. It was low risk in many ways because it had a beginning and an ending, only my readers would see it, and I could create it once and share it forever. Or never.

I thought maybe this 7-day offering would quiet the idea gremlins. It did not. If anything, it made them louder.

Soon after that, I created and launched my first online course (twice, actually) and I loved every single minute of it. But my favorite part was a bonus audio offering I made to accompany the course called The Quiet Collection, a 20-day prayer and reflection series for to help set your mind before starting your work.

Once again, I thought this would get audio out of my system. And once again, I was wrong.

5. Talk it out and take good notes.

This is essential.

If you want to finish (or start) a project that has no name, no structure, no package, and is basically invisible except inside your head, it’s imperative to get talking and listen to feedback.

(And all the verbal processors say duh!) But for those of us who tend to process internally, talking it out doesn’t always occur to us.

Up to this point, I had made two audio collections, but the audio gremlins were still on my back (have I freaked you out by talking about gremlins so much? I’m so sorry.)

I also did a lot of listening, to what they said of course and also to what many of you said. Thousands of you signed up for that 7 day audio series and I received many emails requesting more. Of the several hundred students who took my online course, many told me The Quiet Collection bonus content was rich and transformational for their work.

If you have a project and you don’t know where to start, one thing to do is start talking. Pick someone who knows you well and also understands your work and tell them what you’re thinking even if it doesn’t make sense.

If you work online or have access to your readers or customers, talk to them too. And then take good notes when they talk back.

6. Let your life lead.

Meanwhile, over the past year, my family had an unusual amount of decisions we needed to make.

They seemed endless, rolling into our lives like the waves at high tide. Just one of those decisions wouldn’t have been so overwhelming, but opportunity and circumstance kept demanding we hold two things in our hands and choose one.

And another one.

And another one.

And another one.

It started to wear me out, to seep into other parts of life, to distract me from work and sleep. During those months of indecision, more than anything I wanted clarity, wisdom, and direction. Some days I leaned hard into Jesus, other days I made pro/con lists like a crazy person. Lots of them.

One thing became clear above the rest, though: I am more open to hearing God when I am in the uncomfortable space of an unmade decision.

Realizing this about six months ago, combined with the fact that I am a writer, I wanted to explore how indecision can actually be a doorway to union with Christ, a key element in our spiritual formation. For months, I thought that would be my next book. Not necessarily soon, but when the time came to write long-form again.

I started to take notes with that lens, that this decision idea would eventually become a book.

But my words only came in fits and starts. It didn’t feel the same as the book ideas I’ve had in the past. It felt just as alive within me as the others did, but instead of coming to me in written words, the ideas kept wanting to be spoken.

And then one day in June (this June!), after holding this stubborn audio idea for nearly two years and after six months of taking notes on what I thought would be a book, it sort of came to me.

Oh. I think these two different ideas are actually one idea. I think this book is a podcast.

7. Creativity before technology.

If your project involves some sort of learning – for me a podcast involved a ton of technology, resist the urge to learn the tech first.

Now that I realized this idea wanted to be a podcast, I brainstormed episode ideas, played around with segments, imagined how I wanted a listener to feel during and after listening, and spent hours looking for the right music. I did all that before I knew how to technically create a podcast.

When the technology became overwhelming, I had already done too much ground work to quit. In short, I was far too committed to the creative part of this idea to abandoned it simply because the technical steps were difficult.

Know the beauty of what you want to offer first – it will carry you through the dark alley of learning the technology.

8. Do the next right thing.

Well you know I love this one.

This was my mantra for the past few years. Simply do the next right thing that makes sense. Do it with Jesus. Do it in love. Sometimes that will look like nothing, like waiting and listening and tapping your foot.

Eventually, it will look like a deadline and doing the tiniest next right thing you know to do that will move you one step forward to that deadline. It’s both gentle and brutal, patient and relentless.

When it’s time to move, move. Don’t wait for permission. Quiet the critic, celebrate your baby steps, and be okay with what you don’t yet know. Trust it will come in time.

P.S. I’m happy to report an update: those idea gremlins I mentioned? They are now quiet and smiling.

***

There’s more to this story, of course. More that has happened, other ideas that have rooted, budded, and bloomed that aren’t ready to be shared yet. I’ve said what I hope will be enough to help you take your own next right step toward that project you want to work on even if you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you have an idea for something but you don’t know how to move on it, this post is my way-too-long plea to you not to give up on it.

If you need encouragement or direction to discern what your next right thing might be, well I’ve got a podcast for that. Hehe.

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud – basically wherever you can listen to podcasts.

If you want more help to start your project, I’ve created a free resource for you called The Maker’s Toolkit: A Soulful Way to Start Any Project in in 15 minutes or Less. Sign up below and you’ll receive it in your inbox where you can print it out and start your work right this very moment.

If you are a human and are seeing this field, please leave it blank.

Start Your Project in 3 Simple + Soulful Steps

Enter your name and email and we'll send you your free toolkit to help you start a project that matters to you.